Neoliberalism, Development, and Aid Volunteering

Nichole Georgeou

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781136229411
• Subtopic: Global Development Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This work comes at an important time of global crisis and change, where the world is ravaged by natural disasters, wars and poverty. This has increased the pressure on governments and other organisations, such as volunteer sending agencies, which provide aid, and we have seen an upward trend in the number of people volunteering abroad. Within this volatile environment, neoliberal ideology on how aid should be provided and implemented has become embedded in how policy is formulated. A market-driven model of aid provision has become the norm, and governments are increasingly focused on international development volunteering as a form of 'soft diplomacy'.

This is the first qualitative empirical study of international development volunteering. The book contributes theoretical knowledge on International Volunteering Sending Agencies (IVSAs) and examines practitioner experience in development volunteering in the context of emerging policy developments. Critical analysis highlights the impact of global and social changes and provides a nuanced understanding of development volunteer motivation, and the relationship between volunteers and sending agencies. The book also puts forward an agenda and model for volunteer sending that addresses the complexities and diversity of the volunteer experience.

1 A Contested Field

Conceptualising Development Volunteering

Conventional scholarship on volunteering for development tends to locate it in studies of development practice. However, this approach ignores the important contribution that national studies of civil society organisations and volunteering make to understanding the context that informs the organisational form and program structure of International Volunteer Sending Associations (IVSA). In this book I draw together the two domains of scholarship on development and civil society to create a contextualised and nuanced understanding of IVSAs and development volunteers. This chapter critically analyses core concepts associated with development volunteering to inform a conceptual framework for theorising the range of activities undertaken by those individuals and civil society organisations (CSO) attempting to “do good”. In defining the conceptual framework of volunteering for development I consider three key concepts associated with the activity. These include “civil society”, “volunteering”, and “development”, all of which are admittedly “fuzzy concepts” with definitions highly contested in theory and practice. I locate development volunteering as an activity that occurs within “civil society”.

CIVIL SOCIETY

As a central focus of the research is development volunteering within an organisational context, the study is concerned with civil society as an arena of associational life. I draw on debates from critical perspectives of the role of civil society as conceptualised by Gramsci (1971; 1978) and functionalist traditions as argued by Parsons and Smelser (1972: 21). These competing traditions are critically examined to analyse how the role of development volunteering is conceptualised and played out in policy and practice.

I recognise that there is much debate about the meaning of the terms “civil society” and “civil society organisation”. However, I use these terms, rather than “non-governmental”, “non-profit”, “third sector” and “voluntary” organisations, because the latter tend to be used inconsistently by different researchers as each term has its own relevance for different types of organisations in different contexts. For the purposes of this book, civil society is conceptualised as the space between family and the government or “state” and differentiated from both the state and the economy. I adopt Kaldor’s (2003: 585) understanding that civil society

... is the process through which individuals negotiate, argue, struggle against or agree with each other and with the centres of economic authority. Through voluntary association, movements, parties, unions, the individual is able to act publically.

In this view, civil society organisations are neither government nor commercial businesses. The term refers to those organisations that are part of civil society and include trade unions, religious groups, community-based organisations, and associations of interest groups, such as farmers groups, co-operatives and other forms of citizens’ associations, including IVSAs.

In a globalising world where nation-states are becoming increasingly interconnected, and as a global system of governance emerges alongside movements and networks of organisations that engage in global or transnational debate, CSOs can also be seen to have local, national and international dimensions. The increasingly blurred geographical and political boundaries of CSOs raise a number of questions regarding locating the activity of development volunteering within civil society. Questions include: To whose civil society do volunteers belong? Do we locate development volunteering in the sending country because that is where the sending organisation is based and the volunteers come from? Or, do we locate it in the recipient country as volunteers are often linked to a civil society organisation in the recipient country and it is there that they undertake the activity of volunteering? Or, should development volunteering be understood as part of a global civil society, unconstrained by national boundaries?

Over the past decade, development volunteering has been conceptualised as occurring within an emerging global civil society (Boulet et al. 2008). At the same time, notions of citizenship and of “civil society” are now more frequently heard often in the form of “global citizenship” or of “Transnational Civil Society”, which theorises civil society as part of the emerging global system in which states are accountable to transnational agreements, treaties and rules (Batliwala & Brown 2006). In this conception, civil society moves away from its attachment to the state and shifts towards global rules, norms and institutions (Kaldor 2003).

The conceptualisation of development volunteers as actors in a global civil society is, however, problematic because it suggests a common understanding of civil society and activities within it, such as volunteering. The reality is that civil society varies from country context to country context due to variation in interaction between the state and its citizens (Salamon & Anheier 1999; Haddad 2007). Taking this into account, I posit that understandings of civil society in the sending country context should be given the central analytical focus because differing institutional structures, such as laws of incorporation, and laws that enable tax deductions for donations, as well as institutional practices, such as the enforcement or non-enforcement of the aforementioned laws, influence the size and shape of civil society. Further, social influences, such as citizen ideas about the responsibility and role of government and the responsibility and role of individual citizens, also shape civil society and define “norms of civic responsibility”, which are expressed through volunteer participation in civil society (Haddad 2007: 18). According to Haddad,

... norms are formed by the ideas that citizens have of governmental and individual responsibility for dealing with social problems and the practices of governmental and social institutions that support or inhibit volunteer organisations. The ideas citizens have of governmental and individual responsibility inform the content of a community’s norms of civic responsibility, suggesting what types of organisations are prevalent in a community. The practices of governmental and societal institutions affect the strength of those norms, thereby influencing community participation rates (Haddad 2007: 11).

Norms are not universal, and they take on different forms and meanings in different settings. The cultural context of how cross-national volunteering is understood has a number of political and cultural implications, especially as it is framed within a development context.

As previously mentioned, this book’s focus is on Palms, an Australian IVSA. Attention is therefore given to the particular operating environment of CSOs in Australia because IVSAs are a subset of CSOs. Australia’s unique relational dynamic between the state and citizens has created “norms of civic responsibility” that are particular to the Australian context. This book contextualises Australian IVSAs within Australia’s unique history and sociopolitical and economic context to avoid assumptions of shared values (political, religious and gender) and to highlight broader power relations between nations.

VOLUNTEER(ING) AND DEVELOPMENT VOLUNTEERING

In the global context, there is a wide range of definitions describing the concept of volunteering, and considerable variation regarding who or what is considered a volunteer. For example, the act of volunteering encompasses a wide range of activities including traditional philanthropic service delivery, mutual aid, environment stewardship activities, political or social activism and more informal community-based activities including cultural maintenance and so on (Petriwskyj & Warburton 2007: 9). The location of the activity of volunteering does not necessarily occur only within civil society and CSOs. Volunteering can also be an informal activity, in that it is not tied to a particular organisation or program, but can occur within forprofit areas such as aged care settings or government sectors such as hospitals (Petriwskyj & Warburton 2007: 10).

As this book is primarily concerned with Australian development volunteers, it is necessary to explore the concept of volunteering, as it is understood in Australia, an advanced industrialised capitalist country. Globally, varying “norms of civic responsibility” are central to the wide range of defi- nitions describing the concept of volunteering because definitions are rooted in the cultural context of what it means to be a “good citizen” (Haddad 2007: 73–77). Australian notions of volunteering have emerged in a specific national context, and contemporary understandings tend to draw heavily on understandings of the role of CSOs and volunteers in mostly Western democracies. Exploring the assumptions behind Australian notions of volunteering is central to understanding the individual development volunteer’s conception of his or her purpose in a development context.

In Western democracies, volunteering is generally understood as occurring within the realm of civil service: providing for the “needs of those in need” (Moore McBride et al. 2003). Conceptualised as an expression of civil service, volunteering is associated with the altruistic spirit of “doing good” for the sake of it, not for material reward, recognition or praise (Smith 1981; Zappala 2000). In this understanding, volunteering is viewed as a selfless behaviour, motivated by an individual’s selfless concern for the greater good of society as a whole and other people in particular (Spicker 2000: 38). Defi- nitions emphasise sacrifice, particularly financial, on the part of the volunteer. This emphasis stems from the Western capitalist context where conceptions of volunteering are linked to particular philosophical understandings of the economic value of labour (Ehrichs 2000: 2). However, ideas of sacrifice are balanced by understandings of voluntary action that emphasise notions of charity, egalitarianism and altruism and until recently, volunteering was associated with gift giving (Davis Smith et al. 2005).

In the Western conception, altruism and volunteering have been associated since the Enlightenment, where these acts were considered one and the same (Cowan & Shenton 1996). In modern definitions, volunteering has retained its altruistic connotations, whereby the act, or intention of volunteering, is considered to be selfless and therefore “good”. As Vellekoop- Baldock noted,

... volunteers themselves invoke altruism as part of an accepted vocabulary of motives, partly because the ideology of volunteerism assumes the need for altruism, partly because no other motives can be admitted to (Vellekoop-Baldock 1990: 102–3).

In this paradigm, it follows that the outcome of the act of volunteering must therefore be good, or at least aim to “do good”. However, tying altruism to definitions of volunteering and its assumed “good” is very misleading because within this framework there is little difference between the individual who performs a social service and a person performing a terrorist act for national independence—both undertake their activities without remuneration, coercion or compulsion (Smith 1981: 23). Nevertheless, the altruistic assumptions behind notions of volunteering have endured, despite arguments that altruistic behaviour does not automatically result in social “good” and that it is difficult to identify any altruistic action from which the giver does not in some sense benefit, even if it is only though a sense of self-satisfaction (Spicker 2000: 38).

The strong positive association between volunteering and altruism underpins the conceptualisation of the activity as part of the “grant economy”. In this understanding the volunteer is “‘giving something away’ without expected recompense, payment, or return of the ‘grant’ or ‘gift’ in some equivalent form or value” (Smith 1981: 24). A “grant economy” is contrasted to an “exchange economy” in which there is an expectation of a return of similar value. This conceptualisation is, however, problematic when considering development volunteering from at least two perspectives. Firstly, a “grant economy” does not adequately explain that development volunteer programs have served historically as a training ground for the “development industry” (Hancock 1989: 81; Maren 2002). Here, volunteers have certainly gained from the activity as they have used development volunteering as a stepping-stone into the “dev biz” as historically has been the case for many US Peace Corps volunteers (Dichter 2003). Secondly, many volunteers are part of government-funded sending programs. While the individual may be giving labour as a “gift”, the programs the individual is part of are often linked to broader government agendas centred on national interest. This is particularly the case in the formal and informal tied aid system where governments accrue substantial trade and other financial benefits through the arrangement.

Assumptions of altruism also colour how volunteers understand their motivations (Vellekoop-Baldock 1990: 102–3). Indeed, they have tended to distort definitions of volunteering by defining “true” volunteers according to assumed motivations of altruism, such as financial sacrifice (Haddad 2007: 27). This is problematic, as the relationship between altruistic motivations and volunteering creates cultural bias—it privileges individualistic motivations to volunteer over the social motivations that often drive volunteer activity in other cultural contexts (Petriwskyj & Warburton 2007). Furthermore, as individualistic motivations at times contradict the collective purpose of CSOs, tensions and contradictions arise between the focus on the “individual” in Western liberal definitions of volunteering and the view that volunteering is an expression of civil and social service.

Yet another layer of complexity is added in light of the current market orientation of the neoliberal individual, intrinsically linked to the institutionalisation of the individual in society (Beck & Beck-Gernsheim 2001). Neoliberal policy, discussed in detail in Chapter 2, has had large-scale societal influence, including: the commodification of public services through privatisation; the marketization of the non-profit sector; “the individualisation of the social”,¹ and growing disparity between the rich and poor (Ferge 1997; Jamrozik 2009). Couched within the discourse of individual “choice” neoliberal thinking assumes equal opportunity and that an individual’s hard work logically leads to wealth—we must create our own opportunities and craft our own “happy life”. Within this changed social context new phenomena such as “social entrepreneurism” and “venture philanthropy” have emerged, altering the philanthropic landscape as individuals seek to address the symptoms of poverty, often through the application of business models (Cobb 2002).² This trend is also evident in many Australian government and CSO development programs and policies.

Definitions of development volunteers also draw heavily on Western understandings of volunteering in the domestic context. The following typical definition illustrates this point because it defines a development volunteer simply as someone who :

... willingly works overseas (most often in “developing” countries) for a package that amounts to less than what s/he would be earning in the same capacity in his/her country of origin (Palmer 2002: 637).

While Palmer’s definition emphasises the act of the individual, Sherraden’s definition of a development volunteer points to the increasingly institutionalised framework within which the experience of development volunteering takes place :

... an organised period of substantial engagement and contribution to the local, national, or world community, recognised and valued by society, with minimal monetary compensation to the participant (Sherraden 2001: 5).

Sherraden’s definition is also in line with typical definitions of domestic volunteering which also conflate altruism with the assumption that the outcome of the volunteer activity is a positive transformation of some sort for the recipient of the voluntary act. Further, the emphasis in both definitions on the financial sacrifice of the volunteer is typical. This is important to note as what sets “domestic” and “international” volunteers apart is that “international” volunteers receive a stipend or living allowance, whereas domestics do not.³

“Pure Volunteers” and the Stipend Debate

That development volunteers receive financial payment is central to debates on whether they should be called volunteers at all, with some arguing that a new term should be used to describe their activity.⁴ Fuelling this argument is the clear distinction between how both groups undertake and experience volunteering. For long-term “international” volunteers, the experience defines a distinct period in the life of the volunteer as he or she commits to another culture for a specific term (Thomas 2001: 22). As development volunteering requires taking time out from responsibilities and a career in one’s own country, or is an opportunity taken up before or after one’s career, a stipend is required to make it possible for the person to take up the position. In contrast, for the “domestic” volunteer, the experience is often a solitary act or donation of time that fits around day-to-day, real-life commitments (Unstead-Joss 2008: 4).

A further distinction is that domestic volunteers are mostly indigenous nationals, embedded in the culture. In many instances their endeavour reflects this through activities such as donating blood, and the cooking and preparing of food. International volunteers, in contrast, are cultural outsiders and their activities are mostly implemented and executed through an organisation with multilateral or bilateral sources of funding and are formalised. In acknowledging these distinctions, it is worth noting that typical definitions of development volunteering such as Palmer’s ignore the significant burden, financial and other, that the development volunteer’s presence has on local communities. Perhaps this silence can be explained in terms of the assumption implicit in altruistic understandings of volunteering—that the volunteer does “good” and that his or her impact must therefore be positive.

To complicate things further it is important to note that not all development volunteers receive a stipend. The business of volunteering is booming as increasing numbers of people “pay to play”—that is, pay for the privilege of doing development. Here, I am referring to the rise of commercial volunteering or “voluntourism” that is generally targeted at young adults as an alternative to a classic gap-year adventure or backpacker trip. The “experience” is generally short-term (up to three months) and combines volunteering with a travel experience in a developing country. Such programs typically claim that through work on community programs alongside locals they: enrich the volunteers’ knowledge of themselves and the developing country leading to greater cross-cultural understanding; establish “longlasting connections”; and gain experience in their chosen field by providing valuable skills and knowledge to local communities (Antipodeans Abroad 2011; Planeterra 2011; Projects Abroad 2011). In this manner, these commercial enterprises appeal to the growing recognition within development volunteer programs that volunteers’ motivations are a complex mix of wanting an authentic experience of the “other”, career advancement, doing something that “m...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Routledge Studies in Development and Society
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Figures and Tables
• List of Acronyms
• Preface: Staring and Caring
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 A Contested Field: Conceptualising Development Volunteering
• 2 Historical and Theoretical Background
• 3 Neoliberal Development Paradigm: Social and Political Impacts on Australian IVSAs
• 4 Linking Voices and Experiences to Theory: Palms Australia, Its Volunteers and Their Context
• 5 Motivation: Altruistic and Egoistic Desire
• 6 Interpretations and Expectations
• 7 Whose Partnership Is It? Unpacking “Mutually Equitable Partnership”
• 8 Networking Home
• 9 Conclusions and Recommendations
• Appendix I: Overview of Participants(Development Volunteers) and Placements
• Appendix II: Description of Palms’ Placement Process
• Appendix III: Description of Palms’ Training
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index